Asian Slur Video Surfaces at Syracuse University

Around 10:00 p.m. on June 23, Benjamin Lin posted a video of a man yelling racial and homophobic slurs to his Youtube account. This is a summary of the events that followed. Please use hashtag #suvid to help me follow the conversation.

Around 10:00 p.m. on June 23, Benjamin Lin, a recent graduate of Syracuse University, posted a video of a man yelling racial and homophobic slurs to his Youtube account. The video, which was subtitled and edited by Lin, was allegedly shot on Walnut Ave. The man in the video appears to be drunk and directs his insults at Lin.

Over the next 12 hours, the video continued to spread over Twitter and Facebook. At 11:30 a.m. on June 24, iSchool social media professor Anthony Rotolo tweeted about the video, attracting the attention of SU's Department of Public Safety.

Hard to believe racism still exists, isn't it? Well, actually, no. On the night of June 22, SU alum Benjamin Lin recorded a video of his neighbors at 604 Walnut Avenue yelling racial slurs and chucking an unidentified object at the camera.

Around 4:00 p.m., Lin removed the video from Youtube. While it was initially rumored that he did so at the request of SU, Lin later told Karen Hor, the Jerk magazine editor that first reported his story, that he chose to take it down himself.

At 4:08 p.m., Huffington Post College began tweeting SU students about the video, suggesting that the incident could soon gain national attention. At 4:32 p.m., Syracuse Post-Standard Reporter Glenn Coin contacted Jerk about the story. At 5:47, NBC3/CBS5 Producer Chris Shephard also contacted Jerk before tweeting multiple requests to SU students for comment. This was shortly after CBS5 Anchor Michael Benny blogged about the incident on CNYCentral.com.

As of 5:20 p.m., SU had yet to issue a more extensive statement on the issue. Some within the university community have criticized SU's silence. Dan Klamm is Career Service's marketing coordinator; Kelly Lux is the social media strategist at the iSchool; Rotolo, again, is an iSchool social media professor.